Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with the committee today about the Public Service Labour Relations Board.
Established in 2005, the board is an independent quasi-judicial tribunal. This board replaced the Public Service Staff Relations Board, which had existed since 1967, when collective bargaining was first introduced into the federal public service.
We are mandated by the Public Service Labour Relations Act to administer the collective bargaining and grievance adjudication systems in the federal public service. We are also mandated by the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act to perform that same function for the institutions of Parliament and, in addition, for the Yukon. Under the Budget Implementation Act of 2009, responsibility for pay equity complaints arising from the public service was also transferred to this board.
The board provides three main services: adjudication, mediation, and compensation analysis and research.
Our adjudication services set us apart from other labour relations boards. Not only do we provide the traditional labour board services, which are certifying trade unions to represent employees in bargaining units for the purposes of collective bargaining, hearing unfair labour practice complaints, and administering the conciliation and arbitration process for the resolution of interest disputes; we also hear all of the grievances arising from the interpretation and application of collective agreements in the federal public service as well as cases relating to discipline, other forms of termination, and so forth. That is the largest part of our adjudication practice—the resolution of rights disputes.
Now, the seventh report of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service, on modernizing the employment model, states that labour relations issues “take too long to resolve”, and the best interests of both employees and the public can be “lost in the process”.
While our board is just one participant, along with the trade unions and the employer, in this labour relations regime, we share this view. As such, we are focused on providing more streamlined, responsive, and effective adjudication techniques. We also seek to promote timely mediation to help the parties reach mutually satisfactory resolutions to their issues short of full-blown arbitration.
This, we believe, will contribute to a productive, disruption-free workplace that will ultimately benefit Canadians through the smooth delivery of essential programs and services.
I'll just break that down a little bit. For us, streamlining our processes first means understanding the caseload generated by the parties. We're the labour board. The parties refer their cases to us for resolution. To do that, we have developed innovative ways to strategically manage a robust caseload that has grown from about 1,200 a decade ago to over 6,500 today. We do close or resolve more cases than we receive in any given year, and that's up around 1,600 cases a year, but there is still a backlog. Our goal is to deal with that caseload efficiently.
We do that by managing our schedule more aggressively, by doing up-front analysis on the types of cases we have, and, of interest, we're also prepared to customize our processes unless they're embedded in the regulations. We'll customize our processes for the employer and the trade union to find a process that will work for them.
Over half of our caseload is generated by employees in one bargaining unit. We have established a special task force to address the particular needs of that group. Because there are a large number of grievances, we will group them and try to have a representative case decided, and hopefully the parties will apply the rationale for that case to resolve all of the grievances. We attempt to consistently appoint adjudicators who are familiar with these parties.
In consultation with the federal employers and the trade unions—this is very recent—we have established a representative working group to look into a greater use of using expedited arbitration, which would allow for many cases to be heard on the same day before an adjudicator. It has been used in the past and has fallen into disuse in recent years. We're trying to revive that. That will cut down on the need for formal hearings and so on, which is really a Cadillac form of grievance resolution.
Other efficiency initiatives include better managing of the hearing processes by up-front analysis. When we do that we can decide that maybe we don't need a full-blown hearing. On some cases, perhaps, if the facts aren't in dispute, we can use written submissions without going into a full hearing to resolve the cases.
We're also making use of pre-hearing conferences to attempt to get agreements on facts so that we can reduce the need for full-blown hearings and make sure there are no procedural surprises coming up at the hearings.
We're making some headway in these areas.
I should point out that a single adjudicator hears our cases, unlike other tribunals that have panels of three. We can use them, but we don't use them very often. Most of our cases are resolved by one adjudicator sitting alone, and there is no registrar or administrative person sitting with that adjudicator to take care of exhibits, so the adjudicator has to do all of that work himself or herself.
We also attempt to make use of part-time adjudicators, especially on the east and west coasts, to save travel time for our full-time adjudicators.
Unlike some boards, we don't have regional offices, so in order to save on the costs of having to pay for hotel rooms and so on, we've made arrangements with the Federal Court and with other administrative tribunals wherever possible to minimize our costs. Recently we've taken some initiatives to use video conferencing in cases where the facts aren't in dispute in order to save on travel costs as well.
Another priority of the board that contributes to our efficiency is to continue to modernize our information technology and information management infrastructure. I am pleased to announce that we will be launching our state-of-the-art electronic labour relations information system within the next few weeks. That system will provide us with even stronger analytical capabilities. In the same timeframe we are introducing an information management system for our records management.
I'm confident that both systems, which are built on a sustainable technology platform, will serve us for years to come and will help us realize significant cost savings.
The other area that the Public Service Labour Relations Act stipulates as part of our mandate is compensation analysis and research services. The government announced in its most recent budget its interest and commitment in comparing the total compensation of federal public servants with the private sector. As I said, our board is mandated by the act to do this comparison. We are currently analyzing the wages and benefits of workers in other public sector jurisdictions. We plan to publish our findings in the coming months. Following that, we hope to start the comparison with the private sector later in the year.
A well-managed organization must remain focused on ensuring that the right resources are properly allocated. While the board is a small organization with direct annual expenditures of $11.5 million and 72 full-time equivalent positions to support the board's activities, we attempt to remain as effective and efficient as possible.
We constantly review our operations, and we attempt to identify efficiencies and where we can save money. We've rationalized our staff, including the deletion of some senior-level positions, to meet the board's strategic needs.
Over the past few years, we've made strides in achieving other efficiencies as well. Of particular note, we recognized the need and took the lead for a small organization such as ours to avoid duplication of effort by engaging in partnerships. We provide back-office services, such as information technology, web, finance, library, compensation, and other human resources services to the Public Service Staffing Tribunal. We provided those services as well to the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal, which has now been incorporated into the Canada Industrial Relations Board, and Environmental Protection Review Canada under formal shared agreements.
We also entered into arrangements with the Canada Industrial Relations Board with respect to using their hearing facilities. They have hearing facilities in several regional offices across the country, so we've entered into arrangements with them, as well as for the use of their video conferencing facilities. Our board does not have those facilities, and that board has kindly entered into an arrangement with us to use theirs.
We've also consolidated our office space and rationalized our library service, reducing our print collection to only those resources that are strictly necessary and moving to digital formats wherever possible.
In conclusion, what sets us apart is our unique role and mandate of independent adjudication, mediation, and compensation analysis and research. What also sets us apart is that we work closely with the federal workplace parties in supporting their efforts to address the evolving needs of Canadians.
Moving forward, we will continue to regularly review our systems and processes and improve our practices and approaches to further enhance our efficiency and effectiveness. We strive to meet the needs of our clients and to fulfill our mission, which is to resolve labour relations issues in an impartial manner in the federal public service.
I thank you very much for your attention. I'd be willing to take questions along with my colleagues.
Thank you.
